Harrison Ford pilots

‘Air Force One’

“Get off my plane!” For many viewers, that legendary line defines “Air Force One,” the 1997 action hit that became another big credit on the resume of Harrison Ford. Being presented by AMC on Saturday, April 22, the Wolfgang Petersen-directed adventure presents Ford as the kind of president Americans need in a time of duress.

And Ford’s President James Marshall certainly knows from duress: The military veteran’s official airplane is commandeered by terrorists posing as a news crew to mastermind a comrade’s release from prison, with Gary Oldman as a thoroughly convincing leader of the bad guys. Their hostages include the president’s wife and daughter (Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews) as the vice president (Glenn Close) tries to manage things from the ground.

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Central to “Path of the Panther” is the animal’s conflict with humans as a desire for more infrastructure and housing clash with the panthers’ habitat. It speaks to open space, conservation and protecting biodiversity.

Though now an isolated population (and thus subspecies), the Florida panther is genetically a cougar. In part due to its extensive historical range from Canada to the tip of South America, the big golden cat has been gifted a variety of names such as mountain lion, puma and catamount.

“They’re the coolest,” Bendick said, citing incredible adaptability. “How could an animal like a mountain lion in our backyard surviving this type of winter live in the swamps of south Florida?”

But the animals have also been threatened, hunted and forced from places they once called home by human development. The panthers in southern Florida are the last population east of the Mississippi River, Bendick said.

According to production notes for the film, the Florida panther was near extinction in the 1950s, with a population of only about 30 adults. In 1973, it was among the first animals to be added to the U.S. Endangered Species List. Today, there are more than 200 Florida panthers and their range is expanding.

Like Ward, the film’s main human subject, Bendick is no stranger to Florida. His family has roots in the state and he spent part of his childhood there. And like the panther, Bendick feels Florida has also been misrepresented: It’s not all beaches and Disney World.

“I’ve always had a sense that the wilderness there was underappreciated,” he said.

Bendick has been filming in the state for a decade, and connected with Ward on an 80-day film expedition that explored the idea of a green corridor through the entire state, an idea that is slowly becoming a reality.

In 2017, after over a year living in the Everglades in an attempt to track and photograph the Florida panther, Ward contacted Bendick to collaborate. When Bendick and a team from Grizzly Creek Films in Bozeman arrived in Florida, Ward was at a low point. More often than not, his cameras had been failing, thwarted by shifting wetlands or curious inhabitants like bear cubs. Camera traps, triggered by motion, can be fickle.

But there was also encouraging news. Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission biologists had found a set of tracks north of the Caloosahatchee River that, by size, indicated a female or a kitten. If this were the case, the Florida panther’s range was indeed advancing into the northern Everglades. Lone males often wander, but females and cubs indicate new life.

Filming was a “swampy project,” Bendick said, but the team was able to capture images of the female, nicknamed “Babs,” as the project evolved from a short film to a feature documentary with the help of National Geographic and a team including executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio.

Bendick, for his part, views the “Path of the Panther” as a beacon of hope. The film shows how documenting wildlife around us can change public perception and inspire action. Images of the panthers take them from black phantoms to individual animals with names and stories, Bendick said. And if a greenway can work to conserve wilderness and its inhabitants in Florida, it may be able to do the same across the country.

“You’re not going to leave the film thinking this is a problem that has no solution,” he said.

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